Rural housing exercise

Communal: Taller de Arquitectura developed a housing project in collaboration with the Nahua community of Tepetzintan, located in the Northeastern Sierra of Puebla, Mexico. The two existing bamboo species in the region were used to design and build, in a participatory way, a housing exercise. The project started with the knowledge of the customs and traditions of the families, the understanding of the site, the construction systems used and the way of occupying the territory, being a fundamental part of the research process carried out with the inhabitants using survey files.


  The house fits the needs of the residents, respecting the main spaces of the traditional dwelling: salon, altar, kitchen, portico, bedrooms and bathroom. The project consisted in consolidating fundamental spaces such as the bathroom, the rooms and the kitchen, as well as in integrating low-cost ecological technologies for the collection, storage and treatment of water. In addition, basic bioclimatic principles were integrated to make the home comfortable (cross ventilation, interior height, hot air exhaust chimneys) throughout the year.


Because the project is governed by “social production”, it was of great importance to train the community with the appropriate constructive technique for the use of bamboo, which ensured three main objectives: transfer of knowledge, constructive quality and capacity of Replicate the project. A total of five technical workshops were conducted covering all stages of bamboo management, from forestry to the construction of structures. The construction system used is prefabricated on site and modular, which allows to make efficient the time in work and to manage the materials correctly. In addition, reducing the parts to a minimum allows them to be produced faster.


Rural Housing Exercise, Tepetzintan, Mexico
Program: single family house
Architect: Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura & community of Tepetzintan
Area: 80 sqm
Completion: 2016